Does an "all knowing" God have the leisure of choosing not to know something?

by wannabefree 51 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  james_woods

  This is one of the main reasons why Einstein rejected the notion of an anthropomorphic "intellectual" god.

  He viewed this notion (God COULD have known Adam would sin, but CHOSE not to peek) as a crutch manufactured by human theology in order to make God look "fair" when he made man (who eventually sinned) and then sentenced the man to death.

  It is all tied up in the "free will" debate - and in a strictly analytical sense, if God even COULD have known what Adam would do - then Adam did not truly have "free will" or a "free choice" in the matter.

  This is, of course, a popular JW teaching because they highly dislike the notion of predestination. But the teaching itself is rife with self-contradictions.
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  wannabefree

  If God knows the future, I don't have a problem with that, I don't believe it necessarily makes him the one to be responsible for wickedness even though he knew it would happen for he apparently also knows that in the end, things will turn out fine. If he is all knowing, has no beginning and no end, then time applies only to his creation, for him there is no past or future but all scenarios would be in simultaneous existence, the created being would naturally have a tomorrow and yesterday but not God ... sure, it sounds crazy, but it would just be something that a human being with a beginning, past, and future really can't comprehend. If God has no beginning and end, then he has no future, there is no tomorrow for him, because if he already exists forever, he must exist beyond the realm of time.

  Therefore, if God is all-knowing, eternal, almighty ... to me saying that he chooses not to know something just doesn't make sense because to him all things already are.

  No, I'm not nuts!
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  james_woods

  No, I'm not nuts!

  How do you know for sure?
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  PSacramento

  The issue of all knowing and knowing the future tend to get thrown together BUT are relaly two different things.

  IF the future has not yet happened, how can anyone know it? at best that can KNOW all possibilities of what the future may be, but they can't know what has NOT happened yet. That is illogical.

  Of course knowing all possible possibilities and knowing all about a given person makes the "best guess" seem practically all knowing.

  The issue of free will is ad odd only with predestination or preordination, not "knowing all that can be known at any given moment about anyone and anything".

  I may know everything about someome and know, as they approach the stop light, what they will do ( maybe because Iknow where they are going for example), I may know every possible choice they had when they get to that stop light and know every possible outcome of each choice BUT none of that effects the CHOICE of the person wlaking towards that stop light.

  The only time his/her choice is effected by me is IF I make it so that he/she makes a specific choice and even then they still have the choice of doing nothing.
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  EntirelyPossible

  Of course knowing all possible possibilities and knowing all about a given person makes the "best guess" seem practically all knowing.

  There is some quantifiable percentage God will be wrong at some point?
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  pixel

  Love how Bobcat put it:

  "The paradox resides in the fact that you have to know about a thing in order to choose it as an item that you will not know"

  Excellent.

  Even the WT/FDS/GB says it as Blondie quoted them: " Selective foreknowledge means that God could choose not to foreknow indiscriminately all the future acts of his creatures."

  The key word is selective. You can't select something that you don't know. So, God knew about Adam's fall and selected to not know??
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  james_woods

  Blondie makes an excellent point: This is pure speculation on the part of the JWs (and other enthusiasts for this idea) - no such notion is anywhere in the scriptures.

  Also the point that it is meaningless should be obvious: How would god keep such knowledge secret from HIMSELF? He has some sort of library of things to happen in the future - but just chooses not to look in certain pages of certain books in that library?

  So - if that is the case - who made the library of things that will happen in the future?

  No - none of this makes any sense at all.
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  PSacramento

  There is some quantifiable percentage God will be wrong at some point?

  Wrong? maybe I guess, depending on your view.

  If God knows ALL possible outcomes then, whatever outcome that happens is know by God, there is no "wrong or right" there just is the outcome.

  The only time God could be wrong is if THINKS things should go one way and they go another, which depending on your interpretation of some passgaes in Genesis, may have been the case with Man before the Flood.

  Still, I am not sure that wrong is the word to use UNLESS there is proof that God wanted (A) and (B) happened instead and God was unawre of that option.
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  EntirelyPossible

  Wrong as in he "guessed" one thing would happen and something other than that happened. If he is guessing and doesn't know, then there is some percent chance he will be wrong.
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  PSacramento

  Wrong as in he "guessed" one thing would happen and something other than that happened. If he is guessing and doesn't know, then there is some percent chance he will be wrong.

  You'd have to show were God guessed and I don't recall that anywhere...

  That God is given human qualitites by His human writers is clear, how much of those qualitities are "real" is subject to interpretation.

  We can assume God has regrets when things don't go the way He wo8ld liek thme to go because humans choose a different path, even if it was a path that God knew they would choose based on their nature ( there is always a chance to go against our nature as we all know).

  Abe's haggaling with God is an example of the human writers showing that, even though God supposedly knew that outcome, He still gace Abe the chance to save Soddom, probably so that Abe would feel like he did all he could.

  That, in the OT and NT, God sends messages to people and even at times makes "divine interventions" to help people to the right choice is clear and what is also clear is that God doesn't force them to make that choice, they are always free to go against His Will.

  Can God still be wrong? again, I don't know if we can use that word to describe this.